TITLE The Bastich By Hart
PANEL 1 (BASTICH-MAN lurks in the rafters of a large enclosed space.) CAPTION: Bastich War Journal: Entry BA960427. For two days I have been tracking a group of miscreants to this location.
PANEL 2 (Wide shot of a crowded indoor market with dozens of vendor tables chaotically arranged into rough rows, selling boxes of unidentified merchandise.) CAPTION: My hope was to locate the stronghold of their criminal activities. My plan was a success. This building clearly houses a complex black market where greed and violence reign...
PANEL 3 (Closer view of the crowd. A man with a goatee and black bowl cut points upward excitedly.) CAPTION: The participants themselves,a collection of swindlers and hardened criminals. NERD 1: Look! Up in the rafters! It's Shadow-Hawk!
PANEL 4 (The crowd tugs on BASTICH-MAN'S cape, pulling him down from the rafters.) NERD 2: No, fool, it's Spider-Man! NERD 3: Gotta be SPAWN! NERD 4: I want an autograph!
PANEL 5 (The crowd mobs BASTICH-LAD, who grasps helplessly at the air above him. In the background is a large banner that reads "WONDERCON 10") CAPTION: Help me, Maker, I have stumbled into a Comic-Book Convention..! NERD 5: I got his utility belt! It's a Collector's Item!
CREDITS (c) 1996 Joshua Adam Hart
Commentary
More BASTICH-MAN!
WonderCon 10 was held April 26-28, 1996 in Oakland, CA. I probably threw this strip together in an exhausted stupor after a whirlwind weekend road trip with my roommates from Chico to the SF Bay Area and back. This was the 7th WonderCon, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first one in 1987.
WonderCon was the only game in town for Northern California comic book nerds, and I went every year I could. It was a more relaxed alternative to the pop-culture spectacle of San Diego Comic-con - with fewer movie stars and more comic books. The Con eventually moved from Oakland to San Francisco for a long stretch before finally moving to Anaheim, CA in 2012. Fan Expo eventually took WonderCon's place as the biggest nerdfest in the region.
An approximation of my roommates and I make a cameo in the background of Panel 3. I'm the one with glasses wearing a Bone T-shirt. My college roommates are the woman with a bob haircut and the guy with long hair and sunglasses. They know who they are.